Base
Hardened build
minimal ports, security patches applied at build time
CentOS 7.2
Azure
Operating Systems
CentOS Linux 7.2.1511, pinned to that exact point release, for version locked legacy workloads
Overview
CentOS Linux is a free, open source community rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, binary compatible with RHEL. This image is CentOS Linux 7.2.1511, the point release published in December 2015, and it stays on that point release: the package repositories are pinned to the frozen 7.2.1511 vault, so a routine update applies the errata issued for 7.2 and does not roll the machine forward to 7.3 or later.
That matters when an application, a driver, a kernel module or a vendor support statement is certified against one specific CentOS 7 point release rather than the series as a whole. The root filesystem is a standard single partition xfs volume, the same layout as the CentOS 7 image.
One disclosure specific to this point release: CentOS 7.2.1511 predates the Azure Linux Agent, which first appeared in CentOS 7.3, and no Azure machine can start without a provisioning agent to receive your SSH key. Every package on this image comes from the frozen 7.2.1511 vault except that one agent, which is taken from the CentOS 7.3.1611 vault and pinned by checksum. The image records this on disk, at /usr/share/doc/cloudimg/out-of-pin-packages.txt, so you can confirm it yourself.
CentOS Linux 7 reached end of life on 30 June 2024 and receives no further upstream security updates, and 7.2.1511 was itself superseded upstream by 7.3 through 7.9. This image is patched to the last packages that exist for 7.2.1511 and is provided for legacy migration and version pinned workloads. Plan a migration to a supported distribution for anything that must stay secure.
Why the cloudimg image
cloudimg builds this point release from the vault install tree rather than picking a dated cloud image, so the release the machine reports is a fact of how it was made, and then applies every package the 7.2 vault ever published. The one package that cannot come from 7.2, the Azure provisioning agent, is pinned by exact URL and checksum, disclosed on the image itself, and the build refuses to proceed if any second package is found that did not come from the 7.2.1511 vault. There is no baked in credential: access is by the SSH key you choose at launch, password authentication is off and the root account is locked, so no two instances share a secret, and the machine identity and SSH host keys are regenerated uniquely on every instance. The repositories ship already repointed at the 7.2.1511 vault, so package management keeps working after the original mirrors were retired and the point release pin holds. SELinux ships enforcing, the only port reachable off the machine is SSH, and the image comes with a paired deploy guide tested against the exact image and 24/7 support while you migrate.
Common uses
- Running software certified against CentOS 7.2 specifically, rather than the CentOS 7 series
- Reproducing a legacy environment at the exact point release it was built and signed off on
- Compatibility and RPM validation work against the RHEL 7.2 ABI
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